Project 3: Audacity Children's Book Narration

For this project you are going to record yourself reading a kids story. We want to make our own story that is original to us but also don't want to spend a long time doing it so we are going to write it with the help of AI. Two different ways of using AI to do this are:

ChatGPT/Gemini/etc. - which will generate a whole story for you based on a prompt. This is best if you just want the AI to write something and get on with it.
Novel AI - A story writing bot where you write a bit and then the AI continues with it. This is best if you have a specific idea for a story and want to keep the language in your voice.

Artemis's Beach Adventure

3.0 Making a Script

Draft a script in your editor of choice.
Put it into https://hemingwayapp.com/ and make sure it has a low reading age. This can be done by making shorter sentences and using less complicated words.
Give it a quick read through to make sure it is okay.

Alternatively this script can be used about a dog called Artemis who has an adventure at the beach.

3.1 Voiceover Recording

Next you are going to record yourself reading the script you wrote. Don't worry about getting it perfect on the first go. You will go back and clean it up in a bit. Just keep going and get the whole story recorded.

Save this project as narration_raw.aup3

Do this by pressing File > Save Project > Save Project or pressing Ctrl + S.

3.2 Basic Audio Trimming and Cleanup

Before you do any editing make a copy of your project by pressing File > Save Project > Save Project As. This time we are going to name it narration_editied.aup3

You are now going to cut out any pauses, errors, or other mistakes in your audio.

This video briefly shows a couple of different ways of doing it.

Also you will want to rename the track to Narration so it is all organised when you have more tracks. Do this by clicking on the label where it says Audio 1 and clicking Name

3.3 Adding Background Music

Before adding the music make another copy of your project by pressing File > Save Project > Save Project As. This time we are going to name it narration_intro_music.aup3

First you are going to remove all the splits in your narration track
Find a suitable piece of music and download it and put it in your project folder. A good source for Creative Commons music is Pixabay
Import this music into Audacity by pressing File > Import > Audio or pressing Ctrl + Shift + I or drag and drop it into the editor
This video shows how to fade in and out the music

3.4 Adding Sound Effects

Before adding anything else make another copy of your project by pressing File > Save Project > Save Project As. This time we are going to name it narration_final_cut.aup3

Sound effects are really easy and fun to make. It often takes longer to go searching for a sound in an audio library than just making it. Just have a look at the video at how professional foley artists do it.

Create a new Track by pressing Tracks > Add New > Stereo Track. Name this new track Sound Effects

Learning Reflection

Now make a copy of this document and fill out a learning reflection.

Teachers: You may want to assign this as a task and have students hand it in when they are done.

Tutorial Learning Reflection

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse